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Stiletto 2 dead and I almost feel relieved

I have never been more disappointed with a piece of consumer electronics hardware than the Stiletto 2. I never thought anything would take 1st place away from that wretched Atari Lynx so many years ago. But, oh, Stiletto 2, you suck so hard. Never had I had a device where I can read all the error threads and say "yup, that happened to me, too" TO EVERY SINGLE ONE!

I bought it just under 2 years ago for almost $350. Since then, let me count your disappointments.

1. Your center button failed within 3 months. I had to press harder and harder to make a selection and hope that when it finally worked that you wouldn't "double-click", as if to make up for all the missed pushes that came before. I can't express how fun it was to sit in the car using the remote control 2" away from you since only the button on your remote worked. Finally I took you apart, put a small piece of duct tape under your middle button

2. You teased me with the promise of recording shows. Oooh...a car TIVO, sweet! Except, well, you don't actually do any of that. Not in the dock? No recording. Dock not powered up? No recording. In sleep mode? No recording, except when you arbitrarily feel like it. Forgot to disable the 2-hour autoshutdown? No recording.

3. When you did record what I asked you to, every once in a while you'd just delete everything, just for the heck of it. Oh how I loved that, especially when it would happen right in the middle of my listening. But I learned. I learned that you have to delete all of your shows every couple of weeks at the most and do a hard-reset in order to "optimize your internal memory". Hey, we all have problems. I forgive you. Why would I expect that I could actually use all of your 2GB of RAM?

4. Even once I figured out all of the above, it was kind of obnoxious how every once in a while you'd say "antenna not detected" and refuse to record or work until I ran a hard reset. Never mind the fact that you were in the dock, locked, didn't leave the dock since the last time your antenna was, in fact, detected. I guess you just forgot where it was.

5. Speaking of hard resets, does it really have to take you two full minutes to power back on? What kind of OS are you booting to take so long? Vista???

6. I will give you credit for having a nice sleek dock. You really went well together. You'd almost think that having such a well-matched car dock, complete with FM modulator, would indicate that you were made to be used in a car. Forgive my confusion. How could I have know that you in your car dock would actually overheat when left in the car, requiring removal of the battery and cooldown in order for you to turn back on. Silly me.

7. And, yes, of course you stopped recording at that point.

8. But it was better than when your battery formed a big bubble and subsequently caught fire that night on my desk. It was only on my desk because I was looking up the model number so I could send Sirius some more of my cash.
(And of course, Sirius was out of stock.)

9. Speaking of the battery, I love how you are so poorly designed that I literally had to bend you backwards to make the battery come out. I've never before had to read the instruction manual to figure out how to remove the battery, not that your manual actually told me to.

10. It was also pretty aggravating how you'd occasionally decide to spend 5 minutes downloading artwork and channel lineups in the morning at the start of my commute. Would it have been too hard to prompt me to update and maybe, you know, let me start the update on my own after my commute was over instead of leaving me hanging right when I needed you most?

11. In spite of it all, I could still forgive you all of the above. I could still work around your little "quirks". I could. I would. But I can't because you're dead. Error. Error. Connect to PC and run recovery. 30 minutes into the "10 minute recovery" you restart and either give me error error error or pretend to work but then never power back on after shutdown.

Stiletto, you are dead to me, and you are costing Sirius a subscription in the process. It's ridiculous that there is all of one radio that can record shows and it nearly four years old at this point. It's nothing but a catastrophe of failures and Sirius has made no motions of developing new hardware. So, what, I'm going to pay $150 for another Stiletto 2 because that's all there is? And cross my fingers and hope it's not a lemon? HA. THEY ARE ALL LEMONS.

Sirius, you locked me in because of one reason alone, Howard. I'm not going to buy another radio for what may be only four months left. I'm not going to buy your garbage radios no matter what. Re-sign Howard and I will probably buy the XM Pioneer and pony up for the Best of Sirius package. Yes, I'll pay $5 more a month for nothing other than not to have to deal with your pathetic hardware.
Funny how my $13/mo package magically became $18/mo. I pay that for a little entertainment and you can't develop hardware that delivers the goods.

Goodbye Sirius. I will continue to listen to Howard on my mp3 player. Sorry it's come to this. Like I said, I'm willing to pay and even to pay extra, but you make it impossible to do so. I hope Howard takes his show to the internet. I will gladly pay him what I am paying you and I hope he destroy you like he destroyed terrestrial.

Btw, I am open to suggestions as to the best way to destroy this hunk of garbage.